Starting With "OR"

As the Election of 2020 takes shape, serious problems confront those who wish not only to displace the incumbent President, but to elect a President and a Congress prepared to reverse the destructive policies of his administration, and launch this country on a course of serious and fundamental reform.

The difficulty, as always, is that the only means at hand for ending this presidency is the Democratic Party - a party which has been, for the past half century, a most slender reed upon which to lean.  I don't wish to stray from my topic to dilate upon the bottomless subject of the Democratic Party and its weaknesses.  Suffice to say that the Democratic Party managed, three years ago, to lose the White House to the present incumbent - a feat which most experts considered impossible.  Even today, it is hard to work out how they managed it.

But they did - and we are all suffering the consequences.

At present, the Democratic Party is - nor surprisingly - attempting to "win the last war", rather than prepare for the fight we are all in.  Having disgraced itself by bending over backward to assist Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination from Senator Sanders, the DNC is now doing everything possible to seem fair to over two dozen candidates - many of whom have about as much chance of being nominated as I do. 

In a few weeks, thanks to the DNC, we will all be invited to watch two consecutive nights of televised "debates", each featuring ten candidates. 

What citizens can expect to learn from these joint press conferences - debates they will not be - is difficult to say.  In 2016, when a crowded Republican field engaged in a similar exercise, the only winner was the loudest, crudest, most unrestrained individual on the debate stage.  The one, in short, willing to do anything for attention.

What the DNC should be doing is something that would help interested citizens narrow their choices much more quickly.  A long, drawn-out nominating process - with dozens of candidates - will only drain the eventual nominee's resources of energy, time, and treasure while the President waits, fresh and rested, on a mountain of corporate (and probably also foreign) gold.

But since the DNC is not about to do anything so constructive, it is up to the American people - or at least, the 60% not enthralled by the grotesque (thanks, Mayor Pete) theatrics of the incumbent - to move more quickly to narrow down the field to a few legitimate contenders.

One way of doing so would be to "anoint" one candidate as the presumptive nominee, but that would be unwise.  At present, most polls indicate that the leading candidate is former Vice President Joe Biden - a decent man and career public servant, but an elderly fellow who doesn't seem to have encountered a new idea since the invention of the audio cassette player.

Another strategy would be for those who have not yet chosen one candidate to band together to cooperate on behalf of several candidates - candidates who are doing well in the polls, but who have not yet shaken off the twenty or so also-rans who are, almost certainly, not going to be President this time around.

Strategic cooperation makes good sense for candidates who are consistently earning between 5% and 14% in the national polls.  Under Democratic Party rules, a candidate must gain at least 15% support in a given state's primary, caucus or convention in order to qualify for any delegates from that state. 

The rules are complicated, and the process for earning 15% varies from state to state - but the price of non-cooperation can be extremely high.  In simple terms, it works like this:  Suppose State A holds a primary, and one candidate gets 15% of the vote, while four others come in with 14% each.  Under the rules, the candidate getting 15% would probably end up with all of that state's delegates. 

And with two dozen or so candidates on some primary ballots, dividing the votes, such outcomes are entirely predictable.

Now, I confess, the above scenario is extremely simplistic.  Each state has its own procedure for determining the point at which the 15% rule comes into effect.  But clearly, candidates who are doing well - but not consistently hitting 15% in a crowded field - must consider cooperation.  Otherwise, there's a good chance old Joe Biden will end up the winner by default - prevailing mainly on the strength of name-recognition.

And we could do much better.

There is a second advantage to strategic cooperation for strong candidates who are not yet polling at 15%.  By helping each other to become "viable" - that is, able to qualify for delegates in multiple states - those cooperating could also encourage candidates polling at 3%, 2%, 1% or even less to consider other options.

And this could be vital.  No matter who is elected President in 2020, unless she or he also has a Democratic Senate, Mitch McConnell will be lying in wait, ready to kill every progressive bill - and block every strong judicial appointment - the new President proposes.

At present, there are at least a half-dozen remarkable political talents in the Presidential race, or considering getting in, who are not going to be President this time around, but who could succeed in winning Senate seats now held by Republicans. 

The sooner is reality comes home to some of these candidates, the sooner they can turn their thoughts to knocking off Republican Senators in their home states - and making the Senate their base for another presidential bid in, say, 2028.

At any rate, this is what I've been thinking.  What's needed is something practical, logical, and helpful  - a citizen movement to begin forging an alliance among candidates with a realistic chance of emerging as the eventual nominee.

It seems to me logical that there are three candidates who fit this definition:  Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris.

Over recent months, these three candidates have shown consistent, gradually rising support in the polls.  They've done extremely well in town meetings.  They've raised a lot of money.  They've gotten past - one hopes - the early jitters and silly mistakes of a new campaign.

And no one else fits this group.  Bernie Sanders could, but it's my perception that his supporters are intense loyalists, angry about the injustices of 2016, and not presently prepared to cooperate strategically with other candidates.  I understand their feelings.  I was for Bernie in 2016, and I still have his old, fading bumper sticker on my car.  But that was then.  This, I believe, is the year for someone fresh.

Does any other candidate fit?  Not really.  Cory Booker just doesn't seem to be catching fire.  Beto O'Rourke looked really hot for a month, but is now tanking in most polls.  (And Beto is the perfect case of a candidate who should be setting his sights on the Senate.  He'd beat John Cornyn, and he has plenty of time to run for President.)

Really, the key three are Harris, Warren, and Buttigieg.  A lot of us are looking at these three - perhaps leaning to one, but happy at the idea of any of them as our next President.

With that in mind, I've created a new Facebook group called OR 2020 - OR being the conjunction, not an abbreviation for my home state.  It's an early effort to start collecting people willing to get involved in a cooperative campaign to make one of these exceptional individuals our next President - and to encourage a lot of other candidates who aren't doing so well to consider helping out by running for the Senate.

I invite you to join.  I trust this group will quickly evolve into something larger and more formal - and that I can turn it over to those more adept at the use of social media than I will ever be.

But one must start somewhere, and this is a start.

I invite you to join.